The Stage

CIU challenger Bacon urges standards for club entertainers

Published Tuesday 29 November 2005 at 10:20 by Mark Ritchie

John Bacon, challenger in the forthcoming presidential election for the Club and Institute Union, has called for the organisation to adopt a “national live entertainers strategy” to help clubs determine the quality of the acts they are booking.

Bacon said that, if elected, he wants to enter talks with agents to discuss a way of setting standards for clubland entertainers. Election ballot papers are currently being distributed to members and must be returned by December 13. A count will take place on December 16 with candidates notified on the same day. The result will be made official later that month.

Bacon commented: “Technology has made it difficult to determine the skill levels of the entertainer. The union needs to create a national live entertainers’ strategy. I was in a band for eight years and the union has a role to play in sitting down with agents and setting some standards.”

Meanwhile, all three presidential candidates - Bacon, Alan Dudson and incumbent Terry Watson - have voiced their support for allowing women to become full members of the union. Rule 12e), which prevents this, has been challenged at the last eight CIU conferences, but the vote has so far failed to reach the two thirds majority required to overturn it.

“I want to see women at the heart of the union,” Bacon added. “To continue to disenfranchise women will drive us all out of business. The best signal the union could send to the British public is to grant full and equal rights to women.”

Of the three runners, current president Watson is favourite. Elected as vice-president in 2003, he took over from former leader Brian Winters earlier this year after Winters retired through ill health. Although he has offered his support for abolishing rule 12e), Watson’s own club does not allow women as full members.

He explained: “I would love to see all women having full membership of all clubs but clubs are private places and what they want in their own individual rulebook is up to them.

“I have been chairman and president of Kibblesworth Working Men’s Club near Gateshead since 1977 and ladies are part-time members and only have certain rights. A small number want to be full members but it’s only a small club in a small village and there isn’t really that much call for change.”

The third contender, Dudson, secretary for Bloxwich Memorial Club, has also called on the CIU to modernise to stop the clubs from haemorrhaging members across the country.

“In the early sixties we had 10,000 members at my club in Bloxwich. Now we have around 1,400 full members,” said Dudson. “Women are full members and we have two women on our committee. People have outdated ideas and they refuse to budge, its just deep seated and I thought the rule change to do with women would have gone through years ago. The CIU needs to come into the 21st century.”

FOCUS - Spotlight on CIU

• The CIU’s future will have significant repercussions for the light entertainment industry - the organisation is one of the largest showbusiness employers in the UK.

• Of almost 6,000 sites belonging to the Committee of Registered Clubs Associations, half are CIU members.

• CIU general secretary Kevin Smyth predicted recently that up to a quarter of the remaining 2,500 clubs within the union will close within the next five years.

• Rule 12e) prevents women from holding full membership of the CIU, effectively prohibiting women from holding the CIU pass card, which permits holders access to other CIU clubs in the UK.